


The Two Body Problem

by DHW



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22978699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DHW/pseuds/DHW
Summary: Picture the scene: Holosuite Three.Specifically, a hot, holographic night in Kowloon, Hong Kong. An assassin's mistress running through the crowded streets. The two finest agents of the British Secret Service hot on her heels, a copper bullet from a copper gun their only clue. And... an explosion?Adventure ruined, Garak and Bashir wake up in the Infirmary, not quite themselves.(Or, DHW does a body swap)
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 88
Kudos: 146





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to Quaggy, opener of doors, for suggesting the 'body swap' trope.

  


The night air was hot. Sticky. Close, like the streets through which they moved with increasing speed. 

Ahead, darting in and out of the shadows, their prize: Diegesis Device. As beautiful as she was deadly, and the reason for their brief sojourn in Hong Kong. Paramour of the famed assassin, Francisco Scaramouche. The man with the copper kalashnikov—a somewhat implausible weapon, even when given considerable poetic license—and a desire to see Bashir as dead as the proverbial doornail. 

It had begun with a bullet, unspent, Bashir's code etched upon the side and posted back to Blighty first class. It had ruffled the feathers of MI6's higher-ups quite considerably. As such, Bashir had found himself suddenly unencumbered by missions of any official nature. A touch overcautious, given he was no stranger to danger—indeed, it was a substantial part of the job description as one of the British Secret Service’s suited and booted. 

However, all was not lost (else the holonovel would have been a rather dull affair, and not worth the data rod it had been programmed on). 

Unofficially, Bashir had been tasked with the location and subsequent elimination of Scaramouche. No easy task. The oddity of his chosen weapon aside, Scaramouche was a master assassin. Less of a puppet than his peers, and no longer content to have his strings pulled, if current intel was to be believed. To pardon the pun. 

Quite why Scaramouche wished 007 dead was a mystery. One MI6 was desperate to solve. And so Bashir, Julian Bashir, and his associate, Mr Garak, had made their way to Macau, then Hong Kong, hot on the heels of the devilish Ms Device, and with any luck, the answers they sought. 

The streets of Hong Kong were thick with people. Both tourists and locals thronged to the Kowloon Ladies’ Market, milling between the stalls and side streets in search of a bargain. The crowds made Ms Device difficult to tail, as was no doubt her intention. It took a concerted amount of effort on the parts of both Bashir and Garak to keep her within their sights. 

Left. Right. Left again. Out of the night market and its associated streets and into the tangled maze of Kowloon. 

They dropped back, careful to keep their distance lest their tail be discovered. But it was too late. 

Device took off at a run. She rounded a corner, haring down a narrow alleyway, improbably high heels clattering upon the paving slabs. Bashir made to follow when Garak grabbed his arm. 

“It’s a trap,” he said, pulling Bashir—wait, Julian against the wall of the nearest building and out of view. 

“Well obviously,” Julian replied with a roll of his eyes. He shrugged out of Garak’s grip and took a step back out towards the street. “But that’s the point. We follow her down the alleyway, get ambushed, most likely captured, and then conveniently whisked off to Scaramouche’s lair with relatively little effort on our part.”

Garak sighed heavily. He made to grab Julian once more, but hesitated before his fingers could connect with the Doctor’s shirt-sleeve. A pained expression upon his face, he shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. 

“All these games are so terribly inefficient," he said petulantly. “If I were Scaramouche, I’d simply have you killed and be done with it.” 

“Yes, but that’s because you’re no fun,” Julian replied, poking Garak accusingly in the chest. “Honestly, I’ve no idea why you continue to insist on playing through these holonovels with me when you quite clearly consider them beneath you.”

Quick as lightning, Garak grabbed the offending digit, holding it tight in his fist. He smiled at Julian. It wasn’t a nice smile—Garak’s smiles never were—but one that had a hint of danger about it. There was something predatory about the way Garak’s teeth glinted in the moonlight. Startlingly white behind grey lips. Sharp. Like his tongue. 

“Frankly, Doctor, neither do I,” Garak said, icy blue eyes wide and more than a little wild.

Julian shivered. He couldn’t help it. Not when Garak looked like… well, that. Like he was going to eat him. Or, at the very least, give certain, rather game parts of his anatomy a bit of a nibble. 

Julian viciously tamped down the flare of lust the observation brought with it. A hard on was the last thing he needed right now. If nothing else, the cut of his current trousers was hardly forgiving enough in that department—yet another thing Garak was directly responsible for. Besides, running with an erection was a deeply unpleasant experience; if there was one thing that remained consistent from one Bond holonovel to the next, it was the level of aerobic activity required to complete each mission. Running away from the bad guys. Running towards the bad guys. On one memorable occasion, running alongside the bad guys (and away from a volcano). There was a lot more running involved in pretending to be James Bond than he had initially imagined. It was almost as bad as the Doctor Who holonovels his mother had given him for his fifteenth birthday. Lots of running there, too—and teenage hormones being what they were, more than a fair few erections, as well. 

So. Experience being the mother of invention, Julian took a deep breath and thought of the least sexy thing he could imagine. 

Quark in a bikini. 

It didn’t help. Not even when his mind’s eye added a pair of inflatable rubber duck armbands.

This was bad. Very bad, indeed. 

He grimaced and hoped that Garak didn’t look down. Or step any closer and feel the evidence for himself. 

It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Or even the second. Moments like these were becoming quite a common occurrence, both within the holosuite and without. Lunch had become so sexually charged of late that even the Replimat’s most boring salad, shared, felt dangerously close to some form of exhibitionism. Embarrassment was not the word; abject mortification was. 

And it never seemed to end, this humiliation. He felt toyed with. A mouse on a string to be played with by a cat not only with cream in its sights, but the entire cow. To torture the metaphor as much as his desires. 

All he wanted was for Garak to stop messing around and kiss him. Well, snog the living daylights out of him, to be precise. And maybe slide a hand down the front of his trousers—he was only human, after all. But each time Julian had attempted to make a move, to end this... dance between them, Garak had stepped back. Sometimes quite literally. 

It was deeply frustrating.

“Yes, well, you can always leave. I won’t stop you,” Julian said, the irritation he felt at his body’s enthusiastic reaction to Garak’s touch bubbling over into his tone. He tried—and failed—to tug his finger from Garak’s grip. “I didn’t even invite you in the first place, if you remember. You broke in.”

“Good thing I did, considering how that particular holonovel played out.”

Garak took a step closer. Julian, a step back. He could feel the cool, hard surface of the wall brush against his back. 

“Yes. I shot you.”

Another step forward.

“I remember.”

And one back. 

Julian was pressed fully against the wall now. Trapped. Garak less than a handspan away, with nowhere left to retreat. Time to pull out the big guns, lest he be in danger of Garak coming into contact with his… ahem, euphemism. 

“Do you? Because it sounds to me like you need reminding,” Julian replied. “And this time, I promise I won’t miss.”

Garak’s smile widened. His grip shifted around Julian’s captured finger, palm sliding across the back of his hand and down to his wrist. Julian barely had time to blink before he found himself pinned to the whitewashed concrete. He could feel Garak’s breath upon his face; the heat of his body where they almost touched; the tightening of his hands around his wrists. 

“Why Doctor, you say the sweetest things to me.”

Julian’s breathing quickened. 

“I try.”

Garak tilted his head in agreement. 

“Threats of murder aside, I really cannot stress how little I reccomend following Ms Device down that alleyway. Scaramouche is clearly pulling the strings.”

There was something so odd about the way Garak spoke, Julian thought. Here he was, pinned to the wall, close enough that a kiss would involve little more than a slight stretch of the neck, the air between them so thick with tension it was practically palpable, and yet Garak’s tone of voice gave no hint of any of it. It was the same tone he used when they argued in the Replimat. Light. Measured. With a distinct undercurrent of amusement to it. 

How did the man remain so unaffected? It was baffling. And irritating. 

“Why? Scared, Garak?” Julian said, a burning urge to see Garak with his feathers ruffled driving the words from him before he could think the better of it. 

“Of what?” Garak replied. 

“The competition. Ms Device. She is rather beautiful.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said, coolly. 

“No?” Julian pressed. “I thought observation was your strong suit?”

Garak’s grip around his wrists tightened a fraction; the only outward indication that Julian’s blow had landed. Julian watched as Garak’s smile widened, his face a mask of polite amusement. 

“Oh, but it is. And would you like me to tell you what I have observed?” He pressed a knee between Julian’s legs, thigh now dangerously close to discovering the full extent of the situation in the Doctor’s trousers. “Your plan to seduce Ms Device and gain information on Scaramouche’s whereabouts is risible. Really, how did you envision that working? That you would make her moan Scaramouche’s dastardly plans in between breathless repetitions of your name? Not the angle I’d have chosen, but then again, it has become quite apparent to me these last few weeks that the British Secret Service have a very different idea of espionage to the Obsidian Order.”

Julian flattened himself further against the wall in a last ditch attempt to prevent Garak from discovering quite how turned on he was. He had little doubt that Garak was somewhat aware of the effect he had upon him. The blush that burned across his cheeks was enough of an indication, as was the way his breath had quickened the moment Garak had pinned him. Julian had little idea of what arousal looked like in a Cardassian—it wasn’t as though he’d had much of an opportunity to gain any experience in the area—but Garak had spent long enough around Terrans to know the signs. 

As ever, he was an open book around Garak, his face happily spilling his secrets.

He licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. Garak’s eyes followed the movement before returning to his own. 

“Go on then,” Julian said, holding Garak’s gaze. “Enlighten me. How would you do it?” 

“Ether. A small amount on a handkerchief would be enough to render her momentarily unconscious, after which we restrain and interrogate her. No pointless seduction required.”

Garak moved closer. His hips brushed against Julian’s. Against the Doctor’s rock hard cock. There was no hiding it. No mistaking it.

However, Garak gave no indication that he had noticed. His expression didn’t change. His face remained mask-like, the smile at his lips never wavering. There was no answering hardness, either, Julian was dismayed to discover.

Garak, it seemed, was entirely unaffected. 

Julian felt his cheeks flame with a curious mix of embarrassment and lust. Anger followed soon after. He balled his hands into fists. 

“Ah yes. No sex, please, we’re Cardassian,” he bit out, and gave his arms a vicious tug in an attempt to free himself of Garak’s restraint. 

To his surprise, Garak let go immediately. His freedom, however, was short lived. No sooner had Garak released his wrists when he found himself pressed bodily against the wall, Garak’s hands braced above his shoulders, completely flush from chest to hip. 

“The sign of a losing argument, Doctor, is making references you know mean nothing to me,” Garak murmured into Julian’s ear. 

Julian bit back a gasp. 

What the hell was Garak playing at? This went far beyond their usual, mostly harmless flirting. There was almost certainly something going on. An ulterior motive Julian had not yet fathomed. How else could he explain such _forward_ behavior from a man who, until now, had declined every offer of physical contact beyond the briefest pat of the shoulder?

It was baffling. Garak was baffling.

And distracting. Humiliatingly so.

“We’re wasting time," he said, trying (and miserably failing) to ignore the feel of Garak's body against him. "Ms Device is getting away.”

“Oh, I suspect she’s long gone by now.” Garak’s voice was like silk. His breath was hot against the shell of Julian’s ear. “Such a pity. Whatever are we going to do?”

Good grief! Was Garak trying to kill him, asking a question like that?

Julian opened his mouth to reply, sternly willing himself not to say anything involving the word 'sex', when he felt the briefest press of lips at his jaw. The kiss so light he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t imagined it. He swallowed drily, hips jerking forward of their own accord to grind shamelessly against Garak’s. 

Then, the world exploded. 

Literally.

  


*******

  


It was deeply disconcerting, Julian thought, to wake up flat one’s back in one’s place of work. Especially when stark bollock naked, his modesty just about preserved by the thinnest of sheets, and aching from top to metaphorical tail. His chest was sore, limbs stiff, and one hell of a headache pulsed merrily between his temples; none of which were an especially good sign, let alone in combination. He had the distinct impression that he had been unconscious for quite some time. Long enough, certainly, for someone to strip him and bundle him into the nearest available biobed.

He must have taken quite a knock. Not that he could remember it. Julian wasn’t entirely sure how much of his recent memory he’d lost, but there was a definite gap between now—whenever now was, exactly—and breakfast. And whilst the replicator’s menu had been much improved over the last few months, his morning tea and toast had hardly been mind blowing (literally or metaphorically). 

Something had happened. Something bad. That much was evident. At some point in the last, well, any number of hours, he had been knocked unconscious, and remained that way for quite some time; a story corroborated by his aching head, and his overly-full bladder. Both of which were currently clamouring for attention. 

It was less than ideal. Which summed up the whole situation, really. 

As Julian unhappily contemplated his future—the logistics of the inevitable shambling dash to the facilities at the forefront of his mind—familiar voices bubbled up from somewhere on his left. Faint, at first, but increasing in volume as Julian slowly re-entered the land of the fully conscious. 

“Looks like he’s coming round,” said one, likely Nurse Jabara, if the cadence was anything to go by. “He’s been out far longer than I’d have liked.”

There was a brief pause, filled with something that sounded like the hum of a tricorder. Faint, again, the sound distorted. Fuzzy around the edges.

“He is Cardassian,” another replied after the humming ceased. Nurse Kabo, perhaps. It was difficult to tell. “I’ve really no idea how long is _too long_ for them. It’s not like they left much of their medical information behind.”

“True. Still, it’s a touch concerning.” 

There was the rustle of fabric, and Julian felt the press of a hot hand against his shoulder. Jabara’s, probably. It felt too small, and far too warm to be Kabo’s. 

“Mr, Garak, can you hear me?” The hand gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Mr Garak?”

“Jabara?” he croaked, wincing at the dryness in his throat. His voice sounded strange to his ears. He swallowed thickly. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Mr Garak. You’re in the Infirmary.”

It took some time for Julian’s brain to catch up with the general gist of the conversation—something he could only blame on the no doubt enormous concussion from which he was clearly suffering. But it did. 

Eventually. 

_Mr Garak?_

He really had taken a beating. Whatever it was that Nurse Jabara was saying, it clearly didn’t match with what Julian was hearing. Something was getting scrambled somewhere along the way. Perhaps it was the universal translator chip? It was located behind the right ear, and far more susceptible to malfunction than the Federation would admit. An ill-aimed blow would be more than enough to send it on the fritz. Quite how that would turn the words ‘Dr Bashir’ into ‘Mr Garak’, Julian didn’t know. He was a doctor, not an engineer. Or a linguist. 

Still, it was the most likely explanation he could think of. Either that, or he’d simply gone mad. 

How did the phrase go? 

Ah yes. When one hears hoofbeats, it’s best to think of horses rather than zebras.

However, given that his hearing didn’t seem to be either as good, or more importantly, as _trustworthy_ as usual, could he even be sure there were hoofbeats to hear? Would imaginary hoofbeats indicate the presence of imaginary horses? And if so, then what did that mean? That it was all in his head? That he really had gone mad, after all? 

Julian frowned. It was all starting to get a bit too philosophical. And circular. Which really wasn’t helping with the headache. 

He opened his eyes and… instantly regretted it. Bright, piercing light flooded his vision, sending a shock of pain through his already tender head. With a cry, he scrunched his eyes shut.

“Are you alright?”

“Too bright.”

“Lights to forty-percent,” Jabara intoned. 

Through the briefest crack in his eyelids, Julian watched the room darken to a more tolerable level. Once the agony of the first attempt had fully receded, he risked another. It still hurt, but this time the pain felt less like a vicious stab to the eyeball, and more like a slightly overenthusiastic poke. With a grimace, he squinted up at the dark, Jabara-shaped shadow that hovered over him. 

“What happened?”

“You’ve been in an accident, Mr Garak. Quite a serious one, I’m afraid.”

There it was again. _Mr Garak_. Clear as day, and still as baffling. 

“I’m sorry?”

Another shape swam into view. This one with a tinge of blue about it, and holding a tricorder. Nurse Kabo. Julian peered up at her, blinking as the stern lines of her face began to fall into focus. 

“There was an energy surge in the station’s holographic systems,” said Nurse Kabo, matter-of-factly. “It caused an explosion in Holosuite Three.”

It rang a very vague bell. He could just about recall the sights of twentieth-century Bangkok—or a close enough approximation—and the sound of gunfire as they, 007 and associate, fought their way through the bustling streets. He couldn’t remember an explosion. Only Garak’s interminable whinging as they struggled to smuggle the unconscious form of this week’s beautiful Bond girl into the back of the Aston undetected. 

No. Wait. That had been last week’s adventure. This week’s was… missing. There was hole right where that memory ought to have been. How odd. 

“An explosion in Holosuite Three?” he said, frowning.

“Yes. Both yourself and Dr Bashir were caught up in it. We managed to recover the pair of you, and fix the majority of the damage,” said Kabo. She gestured vaguely at his chest. “I’m afraid to say that your suit was ruined.”

 _Yourself and Dr Bashir_. Said as though they weren’t one and the same.

It was all getting more confusing by the minute. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said. His voice was still strange to his ears. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. Uncooperative. He cleared his throat, and continued, “I think I may be confused. The words… they’re getting jumbled in my head. It’s hard to follow. Let’s start from the beginning. Where is Garak?”

Jabara frowned, as did Kabo. They looked briefly at one another, the concern evident upon their faces, then back towards Julian. Kabo resumed her scan with the tricorder, blue hands nimbly manipulating the machine as she re-took Julian’s readings. 

“All normal,” she said to Jabara with a shake of her head. 

“Hmm.”

“Could be post-traumatic amnesia? He did take quite a blow to the head.” 

“Good point,” said Jabara. She turned to Julian and gave him a gentle, reassuring smile. “There was an accident. You’re in the Infirmary, Mr Garak. I think you may have a concussion.”

Well that much was blindingly obvious. Really, what were Jabara and Kabo playing at? There was quite clearly a problem, and there they were, blatantly ignoring it. 

“I almost definitely have a concussion, Jabara,” Julian snapped, shrugging off Jabara’s hold and struggling up into a sitting position. “That’s not the problem. I think there’s an issue with my translator. It keeps switching my name for Garak’s. Either that or I’m going mad.”

Sitting really wasn’t helping the ache in his head. The change in altitude, however minor, seemed to have set off a fresh cascade of throbbing pain deep in his skull. He brought a hand up to steady his head and…

A hand. A grey, scaled hand, with short, slightly stubby fingers and immaculately groomed nails. 

An entirely too familiar hand, and one that was most certainly not his own. 

“No,” he breathed. “No, no, no.”

This was a dream. It had to be. He was still unconscious on the biobed, mind maxed out on whatever Jabara had given him to dull the pain. There was no other plausible explanation. The idea that he and Garak had swapped bodies was utterly ridiculous. It defied the laws of physics. And good taste. 

“Please tell me this is all just a bad dream?” he said, a note of pleading in his—wait, scratch that—Garak’s voice. It sounded wrong to his ears. Garak didn’t plead. Ever. Still... “I can’t... It's just not... possible.”

“You’re not dreaming. You’re as awake as I am.”

“Liar,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at Jabara. “I’m unconscious. I know it. You’ve given me something. Ambizine. Or Melorazine. Or those unregistered Cardassian tranquilizers you think I don’t know you keep a secret stash of behind the steriliser.” 

Nurse Jabara’s face hardened into the no-nonsense expression he had often seen her employ on the Infirmary’s more difficult patients. The one that said, ‘I have a rectal thermometer and complete discretion over when I get to use it’. Being on the receiving end of it was less than pleasant. A feeling that increased as she reached forward and pinched him. Hard.

“Ow!” he said, snatching his arm out of reach, rubbing the abused scales with a scowl. “What did you do that for?”

“To prove you’re not dreaming,” she said. “It’s a Terran custom, according to Dr Bashir.”

“I am Dr Bashir!” he snapped. 

“I think you’re confused.”

“I’m very confused,” Julian said with a mirthless laugh, “but that’s not the point. The point is, Jabara, I’m not Elim sodding Garak. I’m Julian Bashir. Starfleet designation number 19651121. My middle name is Subatoi, my birthday April 10th, 2341, and yesterday morning we had an argument about the proper order of jam and cream on English scones!" he said, suddenly very aware that he was almost shouting. He took a deep breath, and continued more quietly, “And it’s cream first, by the way.”

Jabara blinked. “Julian?”

“Hello,” he said with a wave.

Jabara looked at Kabo, who appeared just as startled by the news. 

“Are you alright?” Kabo asked, pulling the tricorder back out from her uniform pocket and beginning yet another scan. 

“I honestly have no idea.” He rubbed a hand across his forehead—deeply disconcerted at the feel of the ridges that decorated it beneath his fingers—and drew in a deep breath before continuing, “but we’ll get to that later. Where is Garak?”

Jabara pointed to the biobed in the far corner. “My best guess is there.”

Motionless, naked form covered by a thin blue sheet, Julian’s body lay upon the biobed. It looked intact, which was a relief. Julian watched his chest rise and fall; his breathing was steady, if a little slow. From this distance, he couldn’t quite make out the readings that scrolled across the screens, but the regular beep that emanated from the biobed told him enough. Primarily that his body was okay, though it hadn’t been relatively recently—he could just about make out the few remaining marks of the blast where his skin hadn’t fully regenerated yet. A painful process, but not life-threatening. 

That said, he did not envy Garak if he was about to wake up in that body. 

“He’s not woken up yet,” Nurse Kabo said. “We had to give you, er, him quite a big dose of anesthetic. There was a lot of damage to repair. To be honest, we weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”

Julian shivered. That was a touch disturbing. It was weird enough looking at one’s own body from an outside perspective, let alone contemplating the idea of said body dying with someone else in it. 

“Is he… am I… alright?”

“Your body’s fine, now,” said Jabara. “Both this one and the one over there.” 

Kabo prodded at the spoon-shaped ridge in the centre of Garak’s—his—chest. The sensation the touch elicited was a strange one. Uncomfortable, in the same way having a finger unceremoniously thrust into one’s mouth was uncomfortable. Or a strange hand clinically cupping the unmentionables. Julian flinched away from the touch, earning a disapproving look from Kabo. 

“Well, I suppose that’s something,” he said lamely, trying to hold still as Kabo continued her finger-tip exploration of Julian’s strange new body. “At least there’s a chance I won’t be stuck like this forever.” 

He grimaced as Kabo hooked a finger under his chin, steadying his head as she shone a light into his eyes. 

“How do you feel?” she asked. 

From across the Infirmary, Julian could hear the sounds of himself, or at least his body beginning to stir. 

“Like my headache’s about to get a great deal worse.”

“Doctor?”

If Julian had thought it weird simply seeing his own body, then it was nothing compared to hearing the sound of his own voice. The inflection was all wrong. As was the accent. A dreadful hybrid of himself and...

“Over here, Garak,” he replied, batting Kabo’s hands away. 

He peered around the two nurses and watched as Garak sat upright on the bed, hands held in front of his face, expression one of utter horror. 

“Oh no.”

Julian sighed heavily. “My thoughts exactly.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we go again. Another terribly tropey tale from yours truly. 
> 
> Smut to come. And puns. Terrible puns. 
> 
> (It is me, after all)
> 
> Let's see if I can keep this one to a reasonable word count, shall we?


	2. Chapter 2

The problem with living in space is that the division of night and day is more of a philosophical concept than a reality. Without a star around which to rotate, on Deep Space Nine, by definition, it was always night. As such, Captain Sisko’s complaint, whilst technically correct, rang a little hollow. 

“I’d like you to start from the beginning. Without interruption this time, Mr Garak,” Sisko said. “It is the middle of the night. I’m sure, in the interests of efficiency, we can all agree to dispense with the usual repartee and get straight to the point.”

The wardroom was unusually full for 03:00 hours. At the table sat Captain Sisko, face pensive as he surveyed the rest of the room. Kira sat to his right. To his left, Jadzia, and her left, Odo. O’Brien, bags under his eyes and uniform bearing the deep creases of a long shift, stood by the porthole, peering at Julian with undisguised curiosity. And perhaps a little revulsion. 

Julian sighed heavily. “We were in Holosuite Three minding our own business—” 

“Playing that stupid secret agent programme, you mean,” Kira interrupted. 

“Minding our own business,” Julian continued with a glare, “when the suite exploded. Next thing, we woke up in the Infirmary, sort of, well, switched. Preliminary scans suggest that aside from my mind being in Garak’s body, and vice versa, there’s nothing wrong with either of us. A bit bruised and battered from the explosion, but otherwise healthy.” 

This wasn’t strictly true. The explosion had done considerably more damage to the pair of them than Julian’s statement implied. However, in the interests of _efficiency_ , Julian chose to omit the laundry list of injuries both he and Garak had sustained. It wasn’t a lie, per se. Their various and sundry traumas—a number of which had been hazardous to not only their health, but their continued existence altogether—had been expertly healed by nurses Jabara and Kabo. All that _remained_ were bruises.

It was very possible, Julian thought as he shifted uncomfortably upon his seat—Cardassians, it seemed, were not built for lounging—that lies and the telling of them were an inherent part of Garak. As essential to his very being as his spine or his scales. Given that Julian was now the reluctant inhabitant of Garak’s body, it seemed as though he was compelled to lie (or at the very least, massage the truth into something a little more malleable) when given even the briefest of opportunities to do so. 

Then again, perhaps it was all psychosomatic? _Cogito, ergo sum_. I think, therefore I am a liar…

It wasn’t as though Julian didn’t have form. Simply because his lies—or to be specific, lie - singular—had yet to be discovered did not absolve him. And speaking of which, another thought occurred. One with distinctly troubling implications. 

His enhancements. 

The question was, would Garak know any better? He was not Human, the current situation notwithstanding, and therefore had no basis for comparison. It was entirely within the realms of possibility that Garak would simply consider his enhanced reflexes, senses and cognitive abilities the default state for his species. It would be more than a little humbling for the self-proclaimed superior Cardassian; would Garak be able to bring himself to admit that he was wrong? Julian thought not. Thankfully. His secret would be saved by Garak’s overwhelming sense of self-importance. 

Probably. 

Still, it was perhaps not the best of ideas to put the theory to the test. Julian squirmed in his seat, trying to get himself into a comfortable enough position to sit and think of something other than quite how bony Garak’s arse was, when Captain Sisko spoke again. 

“Do you remember what happened before the explosion?” he asked, fingers steepled in front of his chin, eyes focused on Julian. 

“No. That’s the thing. I can’t remember anything past about breakfast yesterday.”

“And what about you, Mr Garak?” Sisko continued, turning his gaze towards the Cardassian-that-wasn’t. “Surely a man of your considerable _abilities_ noticed something.”

“Flattered as I am by your insinuation, my own memory is in a similar state to the Doctor’s, I’m afraid to say. Though I’m more than happy to assist with your enquires any way I can, the nine hour blank in my memories leaves me with relatively little to say on the subject.”

So, Garak’s memories were missing, too. Interesting. 

“I don’t believe you could ever have little to say about anything,” said Sisko. 

“To borrow a particularly charming Terran phrase, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, Captain. However, setting aside the sizeable gaps in both the Doctor’s memory and my own, I do have a few general observations, if you wish to hear them.” Garak’s lips stretched into their customary ‘not-smile’. In Julian’s body, the result was thoroughly disturbing. “But I wouldn’t like to be accused of interrupting the flow of information.”

“I suppose you have a theory about what happened?”

“You suppose correctly, Captain.” Garak’s grin widened. “I have been aware for some time now that both my communications and location are being monitored by a third party.” 

Julian blinked. There was someone spying on the spy? It was the first he’d heard of it. He turned to Garak, giving him a questioning stare, and found himself politely ignored. 

Instead, Garak turned towards Odo and inclined his head. “I’m sure, given your role as Chief of Security upon this station, you have also noticed the additional set of eyes upon the logs. Whilst I do not object to the spying—what is a little surveillance amongst friends?—the scrutiny of another unknown quantity is concerning.” 

“You think this is tied to the explosion?” Odo replied. 

“Wouldn’t you? The person, or indeed persons unknown know my plans, my movements, my schedule. I’m hardly a popular man, as I’m sure you will agree, and there are many individuals out there with scores they no doubt wish to settle. Holosuite Three was booked under my name. Does it not, therefore, strike you as at least a little suspicious that the same holosuite would be subject to sabotage?”

“No-one said anything about sabotage,” said Kira. 

“Though it is suspicious,” Odo countered to a murmur of general agreement. 

“As much as I hate to say it, Garak does have a point,” O’Brien said after a moment. “Rom and I took a look at what was left of the electrics down there. There’s no way that suite exploded on its own.”

“You think someone wants to kill him?” Julian asked. 

He knew the answer: yes. Obviously. A better question would have been ‘who didn’t?’. Short of himself—most of the time, at least—and a handful of station personnel, the list was vanishingly small. A lifetime of back-stabbing, front-stabbing, and stabbing in general did tend to leave a man with little in the way of goodwill and more than a few enemies, no matter how fine the stitching on his repairs. 

“Short of some sort of truly catastrophic overload, there’s no way that explosion was anything but intentional,” said O’Brien with an apologetic shrug. “I checked the station logs twice. There was no overload. And if there had been, then all the suites would have gone down, not just number three.”

“Then that leaves us with a very big problem.” Sisko leaned back in his chair, face solemn. “If Mr Garak’s life is in danger, then so is Dr Bashir’s. They’re looking for a Cardassian, not a Human.”

A good point. It was one that had not occurred to Julian until that moment. If Garak’s life was in danger, then it meant his was, too—and, unlike before, not just as collateral damage. He shivered. Or would have done had he been in his own body. Instead, a cold, prickling wave ran up the scales that decorated his spine, making the muscles of his back tense uncomfortably. The effect, however, was much the same. 

“You don’t think the swap was intentional?” said Jadzia. 

Sisko shook his head. “I don’t think whoever planned the explosion had anything to do with the swap.”

“Forgive me, Captain, but that sounds like an accusation,” said Garak as he lounged back in his chair in a very Julian-esque manner.

The effect was uncanny. Aside from the smile, now accompanied by a flash of teeth, he looked just like Julian. Sat like him. Moved like him. Another prickling wave washed over Julian’s body as he considered the weight of Sisko’s words, and whether there was the chance, however slight, of any truth to them.

“You must admit,” the Captain continued, “that it does appear very convenient.”

Garak waved a dismissive hand. “A terrible coincidence, nothing more. Given that Dr Bashir is one of the few individuals on this station able to tolerate my company, sacrificing his life to save my own seems a little short-sighted. A Cardassian living without intelligent conversation would be better off dead.”

Julian blinked. That was quite the confession, if true. He turned to look at Garak, but again found that he was ignored. 

“I have to agree, Captain,” said Odo. “Whilst Garak does have a history of self-sabotaging pyrotechnic displays, the technology required to swap bodies with another is almost impossible to acquire even through illegal means. Garak’s Clothiers does not make a thousandth of the amount of latinum required to buy antiques from Camus II.”

Or employ someone to steal them. The only thing Garak could afford to import from Camus II was coffee. Whilst the planet was said to brew the best cup this side of the Milky Way, it was hardly mind blowing.

“Even if he did, there are only two life-energy transport machines in existence,” Jadzia added. “One’s at Memory Gamma, and the other’s at Memory Prime. Not even Quark could get his hands on them.” She gave Julian a grin, accompanied by the cheeky flash of an eyebrow. “As for other ways of swapping minds between bodies, I don’t know of any. The people of Camus II were the only ones ever able to achieve it. Even the _zhian-tara_ doesn’t involve true mind-swapping; the mind of the volunteer is still there beneath that of the symbiont’s previous hosts.” 

Sisko frowned. “In which case, how did they swap?” 

“Sorry, Ben. I don’t know.”

“But I think I might,” said Julian. 

Over the last several hours, he had spent a lot of time waiting. Waiting for test results. Waiting to be discharged from the Infirmary. Waiting for the rest of the senior officers to assemble. 

Waiting to wake up and find out it had been a dream after all. 

(No such luck on the latter).

However, waiting was a boring business. As such, he had found himself mulling over the mechanics of the situation in which he now found himself—it had either been that, or face the growing dread that said situation might well be permanent—and had come up with a convincing theory as to the ‘how’ of it. Whilst Garak’s grey matter was not quite so neatly arranged as his own, it was serviceable enough. The conclusion had taken him longer to arrive at than he’d have liked, but he had got there in the end, which was all that mattered. 

It could have been worse. He could have swapped with Morn. A man for whom intelligent thoughts were in far shorter supply than the words he used to voice them. 

He gave Jadzia a small, tight smile before turning to the Captain and continuing, “The holosuites are connected to the transporter system, right? It’s like a safety mechanism; something goes wrong and the suite acts as a transporter, moving those inside out. Like a fail safe. It’s why everyone’s patterns were shifted into my programme after that incident with the transporter system a few months back. It works both ways. Sort of.” He cast a glance towards Miles, who was looking at him curiously. “So, what if, when the suite exploded, Garak and I were supposed to be transported out?”

“But you weren’t,” said Jadzia. “You had to be rescued from the suite.” 

“Exactly!” he replied excitedly. He clapped his hands together. “The transport failed. But what if we got half way there?”

“Partial transportation,” said Miles, leaning against the wall. “And when it failed, thanks to the explosion wiping out most of the motherboard, your patterns switched. You ended up in Garak’s body, and he ended up in yours.”

“Right! It makes sense,” Julian agreed. 

He grinned at Miles, who blinked in surprise before hesitantly returning Julian’s smile. 

Ah yes. Julian’s brain, Garak’s body. In the excitement he had momentarily forgotten, as apparently had Miles. It must have looked supremely strange from the outside; Garak’s body displaying all of Julian’s puppy-like enthusiasm, not to mention a genuine grin. Uncanny, even.

He felt Garak shift in the seat beside him. Distracted by the movement, he turned to face his friend and immediately wished he hadn’t. Garak was looking at him with unbridled curiosity. Whilst weird enough in itself to see something so openly expressed, it was made more so by the fact that it was Julian’s own face busy doing the expressing. 

Suddenly self-conscious, he felt a flush of embarrassment creep across his neck ridges. Sheepish, he looked down at his hands and pointedly ignored Garak. 

“Just an idea,” he murmured, twining his fingers together. 

“It’s a good one. I’ll take a look through the data logs,” said Jadzia. “If Julian’s right, then there’ll be a record of the partial pattern. We could use that to reverse engineer the swap. Get you both back to being yourselves.” She paused. “That doesn’t solve the problem of where they’re going to stay until the swap can be reversed, though. Letting them both loose on the station would be a bad idea.”

“Agreed,” Sisko said. 

“If what Garak says is true, then we should take them into protective custody,” ventured Kira. 

Oh, _great_. Just what Julian needed. A night—or more likely several nights, with the way things were going—in the cells. As comfortable as the Infirmary (which was to say, not at all), and about half as private. If there was one thing Julian did not need right now, it was an audience. In the small number of hours between now and his rather rude awakening in the Infirmary, he had managed to stub his toe twice, walk into the edges of two tables, miss the handle on every single cupboard he had so far attempted to open, and poked himself in the eye whilst trying to itch his nose. 

Garak had fared no better, having taken to punching the handles of cupboard doors rather than missing them all together. Where Julian’s limbs were too short, Garak’s were too long. His walk had been by far the biggest casualty of the exchange between mind and matter; strides far shorter than his borrowed legs were used to, he constantly tripped over his own feet, hobbled by the fundamental disconnect between his brain and his new self. 

The last thing either of them needed as they got to grips with their new selves were the curious stares of Odo’s security officers. 

“As kind an offer as that is, Major, my quarters would be more comfortable,” said Garak before Julian could protest. “It would perhaps be best if we avoided alerting our would-be assassin to our knowledge of their presence. Besides, if nothing else, then Dr Bashir will appreciate the change in climate. The station is very cold. The holding cells, in particular.”

Now that Garak came to mention it, Julian did feel a little chilly. Not dangerously cold, but certainly enough to feel uncomfortable. He folded his arms, and tried not to think of the draft that whispered across his exposed neck ridges.

“You’ll be safer in the cells,” Kira countered.

“My quarters are very secure.”

“ _Julian_ will be safer in the cells,” she continued, an edge to her tone. 

“Safe from myself, you mean?” Garak replied dangerously. “Why, what a suspicious mind you have, Major. I can’t think of what I’ve done to give you the impression that Dr Bashir will be anything but secure whilst with me.” 

“You’re Cardassian.”

“Not at the moment.”

Kira opened her mouth to reply when Sisko held up a hand, silencing the pair before they could descend into further argument. 

“Enough. Dr Bashir will stay with Mr Garak until this swap can be reversed. If there is someone after Mr Garak, then it would be best not to rouse their suspicions.”

“And you don’t think the station’s CMO bunking up with the resident Cardassian is suspicious?” Kira said incredulously. 

“No, I don’t,” Sisko replied evenly. “Whilst anyone observing Mr Garak will be aware of the time he spends with Dr Bashir, I doubt they’ll know the exact nature of their association. It is something we could use to our advantage.” Sisko gave Julian a hard stare before his gaze moved to Garak. “Two security officers will be placed outside your door.”

Garak leant forward in his chair and began to protest. “That is unnecessary, I assu—”

“Your opinion on the matter is irrelevant. Two security officers, at all times, plus an escort should either of you feel the need to leave. The alternative is a trip to the holding cells.”

And then it was settled, just like that. Julian would stay with Garak under the pretense that their relationship had progressed to something best not voiced in the presence of his fellow officers. And so the cosmic joke that was his life continued, becoming exponentially less amusing with each iteration. 

“It’s almost as if you don’t trust me, Captain,” said Garak after a moment. 

“Am I right not to?”

Garak smiled. 

“I assure you, Captain, my motives are entirely transparent.”

‘Entirely transparent’ meaning that they couldn’t be seen at all.  
  


*******

  
  
The station turned, and night became… well, night. The chronometer on the far wall merrily chirped the changing hour. 04:00. Give or take a nanosecond or two.

They were sat upon the sofa in Garak’s quarters, the thermostat raised as high as Garak could comfortably tolerate. Which unfortunately for Julian, was not quite high enough. The chill that pervaded the rest of the station seemed to have sunk so deeply into his bones that even the copious mugs of hot Tarkalean tea Garak had plied him with failed to help. 

“How do you feel?” he said, cradling his fourth mug, this one simply ‘sweet’, Julian’s new tastebuds apparently unable to appreciate anything ‘extra’. 

“Like I’ve been hit by a skimmer,” Garak groused. “Yourself?”

“Cold, mostly.”

“Hmm.” Garak levered himself to his feet. He gave Julian’s shoulder a pat before stalking (carefully) off towards what Julian assumed was his bedroom with a quickly spoken, “Wait there.”

Garak returned a few moments later with a large blanket. He offered it to Julian with a nod of something that might have been sympathy. It was difficult to tell. It appeared that Julian’s features were not used to expressing the more subtle workings of Garak’s mind. As such, the message that emerged was somewhat garbled. Whilst Garak’s smile was its usual beatific self, everything above the nose was distinctly more expressive than Julian suspected Garak was aware of. His eyes, in particular, appeared almost tender. 

Instead of the expected ache in his chest at the sight (he was nothing if not a hopeless romantic—emphasis on the ‘hopeless’), Julian felt the scales that decorated his neck ridges begin to tingle. It was an odd sensation. Strangely elating, yet with an undercurrent of appalling _want_ to it that made it both sweet and devastating in equal measure. 

He frowned. Or attempted to. The ridges that framed his eyes remained sternly in place, as did the scales that covered them. Yet another difference between the old him and the new. Another reminder that he was most definitely not himself. Stricken, he wrapped the blanket Garak had given him tightly around his shoulders, tugging viciously at the edges as he attempted to tamp down the slowly rising panic. The sight of his fingers, stubby and grey, as they clutched the soft fabric wasn’t helping. 

“So,” he said, eyes fixed firmly upon the neutral ground of the coffee table. 

“So?”

Julian didn’t look up. He didn’t think he could stomach the sight of Garak at the present. Or was that the sight of himself? Both. Neither. It didn’t matter. 

The point was, it was all too strange to contemplate right now. 

“I don’t know.” Julian’s neck ridges prickled with what he now recognised as the Cardassian equivalent of a shiver. He drew the blanket tighter around himself. “I’m not sure I like being you very much.”

He felt the sofa cushion dip as Garak took a seat beside him again. In his peripheral vision—currently a damn sight better in the low light than he was used to—he saw Garak begin to reach out towards him before clearly thinking the better of it. After a moment’s hesitation, Garak’s hands dropped to his lap, fingers absently twining together. 

“Should I be offended by that statement?” Garak asked, not unkindly (much to Julian’s surprise).

“Probably.”

Julian’s scales ached with Garak’s proximity. Even through the thick material of the blanket, he could feel the heat rolling off his friend in waves. Washing over him. Pulling him down, threatening to drown him. It made him want to abandon what little was left of his dignity and pull Garak into his arms like some variety of bony, breathing hot water bottle. Steal all that glorious heat from him until the cold became nothing but a very distant memory. Perhaps steal a kiss, too, if he could deal with the slight undertones of narcissism inherent in the action. 

The compulsion was almost overwhelming. He took a deep breath, drawing the blanket around him tighter still, as though the fluffy fabric would restrain him from acting upon the stupid thoughts currently running amock in his head. 

No. He didn’t like being Garak very much at all. 

Either fate, he thought, had a very funny idea of what constituted a joke—and this had to be one—or was profoundly hard of hearing. In his darkest and loneliest of nights, he had often wished to _have_ Garak. Not _be_ Garak. The two were fundamentally different concepts, if both the stuff of some variety of cosmic joke. 

Then again, perhaps the universe was trying to tell him something. Mainly, that he could go fuck himself. 

Whether that was meant literally was still up for debate. 

“Was it true, what you said to Sisko?” he asked, risking the slide of an arm from his cocoon-cum-makesshift-straightjacket to retrieve his tea from the table. “That there’s someone stalking you, and you think they might have been involved in the explosion?”

“I can’t be sure.”

“But you do suspect it?” Julian pressed. 

“It would seem to be the logical conclusion.”

Julian took a long draught from his gently steaming mug, draining it fully before setting it back down upon the coffee table. He considered, briefly, getting up to refill it, but immediately thought the better of it for three good reasons. The first being that a fifth mug of tea was unlikely to accomplish anything in terms of thermodynamics that the first four hadn’t; the second, that a refill would require him to emerge from the warm, fluffy depths of his blanket and cross the relative cold of the living room to reach the replicator; and the third, and most important reason being that the capacity of the Cardassian bladder was not infinite. 

As Julian had discovered earlier, Cardassian plumbing was an entirely different ball game to its Human equivalent. The experience he’d had back in the Infirmary, sheet slung across the unmentionables as he completed his ungainly dash to the facilities, was not one he wished to repeat in a hurry. 

“So what are you going to do?” he said, tucking his hand back beneath the blanket. 

“Right at this moment?” Garak replied, pushing himself back up off the sofa once more. “I’m going to change. I may wear your body, but I have no intention of wearing your monstrosity of a uniform, as well. There is only so much torture a man can take.” Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw Garak run his hands down the front of his uniform, face a picture of barely restrained contempt. “I couldn’t produce something this unflattering if I tried. It does nothing for anyone, least of all you.” He picked at the fabric of his trousers, pulling it tight across the curve of his arse. “I didn’t even know you were made of anything other than straight lines and elbows, and yet, behold!”

He did behold. As did Garak. Well, hold it, anyway. Much to Julian’s embarrassment. 

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to fondle someone else's bum without their permission?" he said, feeling his neck ridges begin to flush. 

"I think you'll find that it currently belongs to me."

"That's not the point!"

Garak gave him what could only be described as _a look_.

"You're more than welcome to do the same. I won't be offended," he said in his usual, goading manner. "If anything, I'd be more offended if you didn't. This is a prime research opportunity, Doctor. It would be a shame not to take it out of some of misguided sense of propriety."

The last, lingering vestiges of Julian’s temper finally snapped. 

"This isn't exactly the time for an anatomy lesson!" Julian snarled. 

He’d had enough. He was cold. He was uncomfortable. He was trapped in an unfamiliar body in unfamiliar quarters with a man entirely _too familiar_ for comfort. This was all wrong. It _felt_ all wrong. Like walking with his shoes on the wrong feet, or plunging gloved hands into cold water. 

Some of the dismay he felt must have shown itself upon his face as Garak paused, hands falling limply to his sides. Julian watched as Garak’s gaze met his, overly-expressive eyes holding more than a little guilt. 

“No, no, you’re quite right,” said Garak gently. “This isn’t the time. We should get some sleep.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know about you, Doctor, but after all of today’s excitement, I’m exhausted. Now, we can either stand here for another half an hour and bicker, or we can save our bickering for the morning and rest. What do you think?” 

“Technically, it’s already morning,” Julian muttered. “At least according to the chrono.” 

Garak placed a hand upon Julian’s shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. 

“You really shouldn’t believe everything you’re told.”  
  


*******

  
  
Elsewhere on the station, deep in the maze of storage bays that comprised level twenty-nine, a curious figure emerged from a heap of dark-coloured blankets, faintly glowing PADD in hand.

It is said that evil never sleeps. This is untrue. All things sleep, just not necessarily at the same time. 

This was proof.  
  


*******

  
  
Julian was not asleep.

He had been until relatively recently. Garak’s bed was very comfortable, and despite the added complication of it also containing Garak, Julian had dropped off almost the moment his head had hit the pillow. Garak, by all appearances, had soon followed, the awkward logistical conversation of who could put what where saved for another day. 

Of all the ways Julian had imagined ending up in Garak’s bed, doing so by virtue of swapping bodies with him was not a particularly common theme. Safe to say, if he had made a list—which he had, obviously—then it would have not have made the top ten. Or even the top one hundred. 

Yet, here he was. In Garak’s bed—in Garak’s body—Garak himself wrapped around his back, the heat of him suffusing deep into his scales despite the layers of fabric between them. It was a tiny bit marvelous, that particular feeling. The only good thing to have come out of the mess that had been the last twenty-six hours. 

However, as was always the way of it, the good was followed by the very bad. Or at least the bloody inconvenient. 

Julian knew exactly what had woken him: at some point during the night Garak's hand had slipped beneath the hem of his shirt. 

A distinct complication. 

It felt glorious, yes, but troubling. Garak’s fingers (or rather, Julian’s fingers, at the whims and desires of one definitively unconscious Garak) were hot and unbelievably soft against the scales of his stomach. The touch was deeply intimate. A little suggestive, too, given the way Garak was pressed against his back, one particular part of him more awake than the rest. Especially when Garak’s hand moved higher, his fingers brushing against the inverted spoon shape that sat in the centre of his chest. 

A shock of electricity shot though Julian.

Good grief. 

It felt like lightning, sending sparks rippling through him, a far too familiar heat beginning to pool low in his belly. 

This wasn’t good. 

No. Wait. Scratch that. It was _too_ good. Which was entirely the problem.

"Garak?" he whispered. “You awake?”

There was no answer. Only the soft, sleepy exhale of Garak’s breath against the back of his neck. 

For a long moment, Julian debated waking him. He’d lose the heat at his back—so welcome after the chill of the day—but at least retain some of his sanity in exchange. His feelings towards Garak were complicated enough at the best of times. The last thing he needed were Garak’s fingers doing… well, whatever provocative thing they were currently up to. He didn’t want to have to explain the state of the sheets the following morning. 

_’Why yes, Garak, you did get me off in your sleep last night, thank you for noticing.’_

The embarrassment of it all might actually kill him. 

It simply wouldn’t do. 

Taking a deep breath, he resolved to turn and shake Garak awake when his fingers brushed against Julian’s spoon once more, sending his mind skittering off on a tangent comprised mostly of the words ‘Oh!’ and ‘Yes!’’.

The fingers lingered. Brushing. Stroking. Eventually, palming the sensitive ridges as Garak pressed his hand tight to Julian’s chest. 

Julian tried to suppress a moan, biting his knuckles in a vain effort to muffle the sound. He was only moderately successful. Luckily, however, Garak did not stir; his breathing remained slow and steady, whispering across the sensitive ridges of Julian’s neck, making them ache and tingle. 

There was no way the noise Julian had just made could have been mistaken for anything other than deeply, frustratingly sexual. If there was anything he wanted less than having to explain away certain, unmistakable damp patches, it was having to confess to Garak that not only had he been busy molesting his dear Doctor in his sleep, but that he had also enjoyed it. That he wanted more. Felt an increasingly insatiable urge to have Garak's body, preferably bare, pressed so tightly against his own he could barely breathe. 

There were other urges, too. Ones that felt more like hunger than need, the pangs sharp in his belly. Ones that whispered seductively through the darkness, urging him to capture, to bite, to assert his dominance over the warm, pliant creature beside him. 

He knew how he would do it. A slide of his palm across the front of Garak’s trousers. Another hand at his hip, pressing him down into the mattress, perhaps even hard enough to bruise. The curl of his fingers around the head of his cock, he knew from personal experience, would be enough to render Garak momentarily insensate. From there it would be simple enough. The seams of Garak’s trousers would be no match for his newfound strength. And then…

He’d have him pinned to the bed, skin to scale, so close there was nothing left between them except the lies he had no intention of letting Garak speak. Bites. Kisses. The press of neatly filed nails into soft skin. 

He felt something shift deep in his belly as the images played across his mind. A bloom of heat spread down the ridges of his neck, making him squirm. Behind him, he felt Garak shift in his sleep, the barest whisper of a groan escaping his lips as he pressed himself closer to Julian, cock twitching. 

Garak’s fingers flexed, grazing across the spoon-shaped ridge in the centre of his chest again, and pleasure crashed over Julian in a wave. He felt almost delirious with it. A strange sort of pressure was beginning to build between his thighs. One that made the crux of them oddly slick. 

He needed. 

He _hungered_. 

He wanted to press himself back against Garak. Feel the slide of Garak’s obscenely hard cock against his arse. Let the heat of Garak’s borrowed body consume him until he could think of nothing else save the building pressure between his legs and the ache of his swollen neck ridges. 

Instead, he held himself still. It was torture. Especially when he felt Garak shift again, hips grinding softly against the curve of his arse, seeking friction. 

And again. 

And again. 

Julian fisted his hands into the bedsheets. He was desperate to pull away. Stumble from the bed and away from Garak, from the feverishly hot body at his back, before he embarrassed himself. What particular shape that embarrassment would take was currently unknown. Maybe he’d find himself calling Garak’s name, repeating it over and over until he woke him, the reason for his torment as plain as the ridges on his face? Or maybe he’d come with a stifled gasp, leaving Garak asleep and both the sheets and his trousers incriminatingly sticky. 

Neither of the above seemed like a good option.

The fingers at his chest moved again. Electricity crackled through him, making his teeth clatter in his mouth as he clenched his jaw to muffle the moan that bubbled up from his throat. And it seemed the shock was catching; he heard Garak groan in his sleep, hips canting forward, cock sliding between the cheeks of Julian’s arse. 

If the tops of Julian’s thighs had been damp before, they were drenched now. The fabric of his pyjamas was stuck to his slick scales in a thoroughly indecent manner. Unable to help himself, he pressed a hand against the crux of his thighs. Beneath the damp material, he could feel the outline of two thick, armoured ridges; he pressed harder and sparks danced across his vision. But it wasn’t enough. There was something missing (besides the obvious). 

Unable to resist temptation, Julian moved to slide a hand beneath the waistband of his trousers and explore territories, if not completely unknown, then hitherto uninvestigated, when he heard Garak’s breath catch. The sound was followed by a low, quiet moan. 

It was quite possibly the single, sexiest thing Julian had ever heard. 

The pressure between Julian’s thighs spiked with his desire, the sensation suddenly excruciating. Julian bit his lip and tried to think of something, _anything_ other than the feel of Garak against him.

It didn’t help. 

In a vain effort to slow the painful precipice his body seemed intent on hurtling towards, Julian stilled. Garak’s hips did not. They rocked against him once, twice, three times, each slide of his cock against Julian’s arse more tortuous than the last. 

And then it stopped. 

Julian knew the exact moment Garak woke up. The exact moment Garak came, too. Mostly because they were one and the same. 

He held as still as possible, concentrating hard on his breathing as he pretended to sleep. No easy task given the feel of Garak, spent and panting against him, and the arousal that still pulsed through his veins. But he tried. 

And apparently succeeded. 

After a moment, he felt the bed shift as Garak left. The sound of his bare feet felt obscenely loud as he padded across the floor, presumably towards the bathroom. Julian suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later as the hum of the sonic shower filled the relative silence of Garak’s quarters. 

Julian rolled onto his back, breathing heavily as he tried to make sense of everything that had just happened. 

It was the proximity. Nothing more. Julian knew it. How could he not? It was his body, after all. Sometimes, a saucy dream was enough, especially if there was a warm body beside him. Goodness knew Leeta had experienced it often enough. As had Palis, Erit, and on one horribly memorable occasion, Miles. (They didn’t talk about it. Ever). 

It was nothing personal.

Still, the disappointment made the desire he felt fizzle and die, leaving him sticky and with an ache between his thighs he couldn’t quite shake, his body intent on rather cruelly reminding him what hadn’t happened. 

With a heavy sigh, Julian rolled onto his side, gathering the duvet tightly around him and waited. For what, he didn’t know. 

Garak did not return.


	3. Chapter 3

The chronometer struck seven.

The station was quiet. The Promenade especially so. The shops, restaurants and other sundry places of commerce stood with their shutters down and lights off. There was an hour to go before the end of the night shift, and another two before business hours began. The calm before the storm of shoppers. 

Yes, the promenade was quiet, but that was not to say that it was empty. 

Crewman Timothy Alden was elbow-deep in one of the junction boxes behind Quark’s bar. It was a mess of wires and connections, the unholy tangle interspersed here and there with pilfered kitchen equipment and the odd coat hanger. 

What it lacked in order, it more than made up for in annotation. Everything was labeled. From the thick earth cable that grounded the motherboard of holosuites two and three, to the teaspoon that bridged the gap in the bar’s lighting circuit. Each and every piece was tagged with tiny Ferengi handwriting. 

That Crewman Alden couldn’t read Ferengi was a minor complication; Rom’s handwriting was so dire that even if Alden did know his _oox_ from his _bZa_ , it would have remained equally incomprehensible. He peered down at the nearest label, squinting as he tried to decipher its meaning. There was a ‘D’, he was sure. Maybe an ‘F’. And what looked like it might be the Ferengi word for ‘auxiliary’—though, from a slightly different angle, it did look suspiciously like the word for ‘soup’. 

The _Auxiliary DFA_ , perhaps? Or maybe the _F_A_D Auxiliary Bypass_?

Who knew? Not Alden, that was for certain. 

He resolved to visit the Infirmary when his shift was over and bother Nurse Jabara about fixing his UT chip. The visual link was clearly on the fritz. Had been for weeks now. And it was just sodding typical, wasn’t it, that he was assigned to fix a system tagged with one of the only languages he couldn’t read.

Alden eyed the cabling darkly, as if willing the little letters to turn into the Standard alphabet he knew and loved.

Oh well. Needs must. 

With a sigh, he fished out a thin blue cable from the back of the unit, pulling the end free from the processor chip with a vicious tug. 

And proceeded to plunge the bar into darkness. 

“Oh, great,” he grumbled as he felt around for his toolkit. “Auxiliary DFA, my arse.” 

It was safe to say that Timothy Alden’s morning, though barely begun, was not going well. 

A loud hum began to rumble from the compartment below Alden’s feet as the backup generator kicked in. After a moment or two, the overhead emergency lights flickered on, the angle casting the junction box into deep blue shadow. 

Cardassian planning at its finest. 

The crewman rolled his eyes. He reached down into his toolkit and pulled out a slim, stylus-like flashlight. Turning it on with a vicious little flick, he shoved it between his teeth and leant forward, groping amongst the tangle of wires for the broken connection. 

Just… wait… _There!_

Alden’s fingers brushed against the processor chip. It hung loosely from the back of the cabinet, swinging to-and-fro from the thread-like optolythic connector that ran from Holosuite Three’s main circuit board. With a grunt of triumph, he swept aside as much of the tangled wiring as he could, peering into the depths of the cabinet as he tried to determine exactly which section of the board it had been torn from. 

No easy task. 

There is a universal truth, known in engineering circles across the Alpha Quadrant, and it is this:

Whilst Ferengi make the best businessmen, they rarely make the best engineers. 

It wasn’t so much a question of competency—Rom was as competent as any of Starfleet’s finest, Alden had to admit—but more one of cost-cutting. Whilst points were gained for innovation, there was a reason why spoons and spatulas were not part of the standard toolkit. If there was one thing that could be said in its favour, it was that Ferengi engineering would certainly give any enterprising sort the biggest bang for their buck. 

Quite literally. 

Sighing to himself, Alden shuffled further into the cabinet. He grabbed the flashlight from between his teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see something glinting in the light. Something small and cylindrical. 

Something that had no place at all being in an electrical cabinet. 

Alden reached down and grabbed the item, turning it over in his fingers. It was an empty gas canister. Exactly what gas it had once contained Alden didn’t know. He couldn’t read the writing etched into the rim. But he could recognise the script. 

Frowning, he tapped his combadge. 

“Alden to engineering.”

_/// O’Brien here ///_

“There’s something down here I think you need to see, Chief. A ga—”

A sharp pain lanced through the back of Crewman Alden’s skull. He fell to the floor, unconscious, both flashlight and canister skittering past a pair of black-booted feet and off under the bar.  


***

  
Morning, as always, began with the chime of a bell.

For Julian Bashir, this was the only familiar item on his waking agenda. Whereas most mornings consisted of a groggy, slightly irritated return to consciousness, followed by a shower, a rushed breakfast of jam and toast, and an entirely too large (and entirely too sweet) Raktajino, today Julian found himself awake and alert before the dreaded chime had sounded. With nowhere to go, and distinctly less to do, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. 

The bed was empty. Garak, from what he could hear through the station’s entirely too thin walls, was somewhere in the living room. Herding elephants—or their Cardassian equivalents—if the sheer volume of the clatters and bangs was anything to go by. 

Julian sighed. He had hoped, however foolish, that the events of the previous day had been little more than a dream. That when he woke up, he’d be back in his own body, in his own quarters, with nothing more to show for it all than an embarrassed sort of blush whenever he looked in Garak’s direction. Not that there was anything particularly unusual there; these days, more often than not, he felt heat rising to his cheeks when he so much as thought about the man. He couldn’t help it. Not with the directions his mind went careening off in when given half the chance. 

Until recently, he had always considered his particularly vibrant imagination a good thing. Now that it had taken to assaulting him with scenarios in which Garak was either naked, moaning, snogging the living daylights out of him, or some combination of all three, it felt like more of a curse. 

It would only get worse from here, he thought morosely. Especially now that he was about to give himself an incredibly detailed frame of reference with regards to the first and foremost of his salacious imaginings. RE: nudity. 

He could see the spectre of the morning’s shower looming large on the horizon. As much as the remaining shreds of his sanity wished otherwise, he doubted he could get away without one. Cardassians, as a species, valued cleanliness; he shuddered to think of the ear-full Garak would give him should he choose to remain amongst the great unwashed. Particularly after giving him permission to look, touch, and no-doubt fondle all aspects of his borrowed body. 

And that was before he even considered the consequences of last night’s exercise in frustration. The fabric of his pyjamas was still stuck, rather incriminatingly, to the damp scales of his inner thighs. 

It wasn’t as though he could help it. Strange physiological responses aside, the lack of resolution had left him with what he could only assume was the Cardassian equivalent of a raging case of blue balls. He ached in places no man ought to ache. Felt unbearably sticky in those same places, too, and no doubt more than a little fragrant. 

A less than ideal situation, it had to be said, and one only a date with the sonics could solve. 

So, taking a deep breath, he steeled himself for the coming sensory onslaught and rolled out of bed. Then promptly felt his knees give way. 

“Oh, for goodness sake,” he grumbled, levering himself up from the floor, hand braced upon the mattress to steady himself. 

His legs were shorter now. It was something he would have to continue to remind himself. Either that, or brief, painful inspections of the carpet were going to become a far more common occurrence. 

Carefully, he made his way over towards the bathroom, eyes fixed downwards to ensure each foot did exactly as it was told. A warning glare directed at his hand resulted in little damage to either the bathroom door, its handle or his grasping fingers. And, after a further few hesitant steps—and a slight altercation involving his hip and the corner of the bathroom sink—he set the sonic shower running and began to strip off his pyjamas. 

He hadn’t intended to look in the mirror. If for no other reason than to save himself the momentary psychological shock of seeing someone else’s face reflected back. Yet, despite the insistent little voice in the back of his head that advised him against such idiocy, he found he couldn’t help himself. 

He blinked. 

Then, after a moment, a blueish flush began to colour the ridges of his neck. In the mirror, he watched the scales begin to darken, a corresponding heat prickling across the surface. 

Garak’s body, observed thankfully only from the hips up, was nothing like Julian had imagined. The shape of it was as expected, obviously. The figure Garak cut beneath his clothing was as familiar to Julian as the back of his hand—his own hand, that was. Strong. Broad-shouldered. An ever so slight—and ever so tempting—softness at the middle where he had begun to lose tone. But the _detail_. That was new. 

He knew now that the teardrop-shaped ridge that sat in the centre of his sternum was connected to a web of ridges, most little more than a shadow against his scales, each one tracing the outline of his musculature. A large, raised ridge split his abdomen in two, running from his sternum down to a place—thankfully—out of view in the mirror. No nipples. No navel either. Across his ribs there was a series of slightly thicker, keeled scales, leading down to the vulnerable, velvet-soft ones of his belly. The scales were lighter there. Off-white. Darker down his sides and at his elbows—probably his knees too, if Julian could bring himself to look—each scale edged in a grey colour so dark, it was almost black. His hips were ridged, too, the dark grey line of them connected to another tear-drop shape that sat just above his…

Julian swallowed drily. 

His fingers itched. He balled them into fists, tearing his gaze away from the mirror as he stepped into the shower cubicle. He ducked his head under the sonic spray and tried to clear his mind. 

He was not entirely successful. 

Not when confronted with what seemed like acres of perfect grey scales no matter which way he looked. Scales that shimmered as he moved, the sonics slowly sloughing off the dirt and the grime of the previous day. 

Grimacing, he turned the power up and scrubbed viciously at his arms. Just sodding typical, wasn’t it? Finally, after four long years, he’d got to see Garak naked. The fact that he was Garak, for all intents and purposes, put a distinct dent in his plans, vis-à-vis seduction. There was something uncomfortably self-indulgent about ogling Garak’s body whilst currently inside it—and specifically not in the way he had wished. 

God, he didn’t think he’d ever wanted someone as much as he wanted Garak. Which was odd, in a way. He wasn’t Julian’s type, all things considered. He wasn’t young, or pretty, or waif-like, as many of his previous conquests had been. He didn’t hang off Julian’s every word. Nor was he particularly impressed by the tales of his medical school triumphs. If anything, he gave Julian the distinct impression that no matter how clever he had been, how bright and quick and brilliant, he could always do better. Be better. 

It was nothing if not refreshing. And maybe that was part of the appeal? The reason he lusted so completely after him. Had, perhaps, even fallen a little bit in love with him. 

The tingling heat that crept across his neck ridges intensified. 

He wanted Garak. He wanted to take him, strip him, slam him hard against the wall of the shower cubicle and devour his mouth until he gasped and moaned. He wanted to use his hands, his mouth, his cock—anything, _everything_ —and leave him shaking and spent and _his_. He wanted to mark him. Claim him. He wanted…

 _He wanted._

Feelings, sensations from the previous night assaulted his mind. Garak against his back. His breath whispering across the ridges of his neck. His hands beneath his shirt. His cock, hot and unmistakably hard pressed against the curve of his arse. 

Julian’s palm brushed against the tear drop-shaped ridge in the centre of his chest... and his knees almost gave out beneath him. A white-hot shock of something that felt appallingly like _need_ shot down the ridge that split his chest and stomach in two, making the scales between his hips ache. Lower too. The ridge went all the way down, splitting in two at the point where it disappeared between his thighs; he could feel the sensitive scales there beginning to grow hot. 

Dreadfully so.

He braced himself against the shower wall, the palm of one hand flat against the cool tiles as the other drifted down his front almost of its own accord. His fingers followed the raised scales; fire seemed to trail in their wake, the burning sensation spreading outwards from the ridge his fingertips traced, heat creeping across his naked scales, making him gasp. The muscles of his stomach tightened. He could feel the flutter of his pulse in his fingertips, hear it pounding in his ears. The ridges at his neck felt tight. The ache of them sent pangs of something akin to hunger coursing through him. 

He growled. 

Then blinked, surprised at the ferocity of his response. 

It was strange. So completely and utterly alien. He felt almost wild, arousal coursing through him, burning across his scales. Gone were the languid, hedonistic tendencies he has always associated with sexual excitement, instead replaced by urges with a more aggressive edge to them. Ones that demanded his attention. That whispered not-so-sweet nothings in his ear, and made him think of teeth at his neck and nails raked down his spine. 

He couldn’t. 

He _shouldn’t._

And yet. 

Breathing hard, Julian’s hand moved lower, fingers skimming over the point where his ventral ridge split to press into the hot, startlingly wet slit between. Shocks of pleasure knifed through him. A terrible sort of pressure was beginning to build between his hips; it was almost painful. Beneath his fingertips—slick with his arousal—he could feel the shape of something thick and ridged. Something that twitched with each featherlight pass of his fingers, sending sparks crawling across his scales. 

He felt full. Hot. Constricted despite his nakedness, the ache between his thighs all-consuming. 

Acting on instinct, Julian shifted his stance, spreading his legs a little wider as his fingers sunk deeper into himself. He felt something shift. Swell, too, the fullness he felt becoming almost unbearable. 

He needed…

He wanted…

He...

A moan—one barely muffled by the heel of his hand, hastily shoved in his mouth—tore itself from his throat as he felt the ridges between his thighs begin to part. He looked down, wide eyed and panting, and watched as his cock slowly pushed between the split in his swollen ventral ridge. It was surprisingly human-looking, aside from the ridges that circled the head. Thick. Long. Sticky with arousal, the dark grey scales of it glistening in the light. 

The sight of it alone was enough to make him come. 

It was like nothing he had ever felt before. The force of his orgasm ripped through him like a hurricane. He bit down hard on the heel of his hand, shaking as he felt wave after wave of pleasure wash over him. Stars danced across his vision. His blood pounded in his ears. His knees threatened to give way beneath him, a giddy sort of relief creeping across him as the aftershocks began to subside.

Suddenly exhausted, he slumped forward, head resting against the tiles as he fought to catch his breath. A distinctly guilty feeling began to curl in the pit of his stomach as he looked at what he’d done. At the complete and utter mess he’d made of the situation—and the shower cubicle. 

“Oh, well done, Julian,” he said to himself. “You really know how to make things worse for yourself, don’t you?”

His conscience—what little was left of it—couldn’t help but agree.  


***

  
“So, what do you think?” O’Brien asked.

What Chief Constable Odo thought was that life, in general, would be a far easier affair if Quark’s—and its eponymous proprietor—ceased to be. It would take more hands than he was capable of shifting to count the number of Incidents associated with the felonius Ferengi and his tawdry establishment. This was the second such Incident in as many days, and he had no potential suspects for this one, either. 

What he said was, “Crewman Alden was hit on the back of the head with some sort of blunt object. Likely, a bottle from the bar, which the suspect then discarded. The blow was not intended to kill, merely to incapacitate.”

O’Brien scratched his chin thoughtfully. He leant back against the nearest wall panel, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. 

“That would tally with what happened on my end,” O’Brien said. “He said there was something down here I needed to see.”

“Did Crewman Alden tell you what that was?”

“Didn’t get the chance.”

“Hmm.”

Odo peered down at the small patch of blood that had pooled beside the cabinet with a look of distaste. Solids were strangely leaky creatures. A bash on the head, a stab to the gut, a slip of a screwdriver whilst tightening a particularly tricky screw, and suddenly their insides found themselves outside with no hope of return. It seemed like a dreadfully risky state of existence. And that was before he even mentioned their nasty habit of leaving hair, skin cells, DNA and Prophets’ only knew what else behind at each and every opportunity. 

Disgusting, really, when one actually thought about it. 

Still, the general tendency of solids to leave a trail of biological detritus in their wake did have its advantages. It meant that there were always clues to find. If, that is, one knew where to look.

And, in this instance, the electrical cabinet seemed like the logical place to start. Odo bent down to peer at the tangle of wires when he heard the sound of familiar footsteps behind him. 

“Whatever happened to that poor Crewman, I just want to say that I had nothing to do with it,” said Quark.”I wasn’t even in the bar. I was in bed. Asleep.”

“No-one was accusing you, Quark,” O’Brien said. 

“For now,” Odo added. He turned, giving Quark a sharp look over his shoulder. “Though it sounds like you have a guilty conscience. Is there something you need to confess?” 

Odo watched as Quark’s fists clenched. Glaring at the shapeshifter, Quark folded his arms, looking for all the world like a spoilt toddler about to throw a tantrum. 

“This is harassment! I’m the victim here. First an explosion, and now attempted murder! I’m going to get a reputation.”

“You already have a reputation,” Odo replied, attention returning to the cabinet. 

“For cheating my customers, not for trying to kill them!”

“The two Andorians you sold Bet’za wine to last week would disagree.”

“How was I to know Andorians are allergic to Bet’za fruit? They ordered that of their own free will. If it didn’t agree with them, then that’s their own problem,” Quark groused. “Besides, I gave them the cure. At a very reasonable price, too, I might add.”

Odo rolled his eyes. If there was one thing that could be said for Quark, it was that he saw every opportunity as a potential business opportunity. Even the accidental poisoning of his own customers. You had to hand it to him—either that or he’d nick it.

It wasn’t easy being the Chief of Security on Deep Space Nine. There were rules and regulations one had to follow, many of which seemed to severely hinder both the investigation and subsequent apprehension of the guilty in the name of so-called privacy. That meant no cameras. No bugs. And almost certainly no keyloggers installed on the station’s consoles.

Officially, at any rate. 

Odo made a mental note to check the security footage from the bar when he returned to his office. Both the official and the unofficial feeds. One of the many cameras he had placed in the bar had to have picked up something.

“I still think we should tell Julian,” O’Brien said after a moment. “He is the station’s CMO. He’d want to know about Alden’s injuries.”

“Dr Bashir is still indisposed from yesterday’s incident,” Odo said with a meaningful glance towards Quark. 

“Not my fault either,” Quark said. 

“It would be best to leave him undisturbed,” Odo continued, ignoring Quark. “Allowing him access to the Infirmary may put the Doctor into danger.”

“You think this and the explosion might be connected?” O’Brien said. 

“I can’t say for certain.” Odo pushed aside a fall of blue-coated wires, eyes searching for something, anything, that might be a clue. “Yet.”  


***

  
There is an old Earth saying which goes something along the lines of, ‘before you judge a man, you must walk a mile in his shoes’. It is an impractical piece of advice for several reasons. The foremost being to successfully walk a mile, or any other convenient unit of distance, the shoes must fit. Which does rather limit one to sharing perspective altering metaphors with those in possession of similarly sized feet.

Luckily for Julian, the above did not apply. In fact, it was incredibly easy for a man to walk in another’s shoes when he also had the use of the feet to which they belonged. Not, that is to say, that the experience did much to curb Julian’s judgement. 

His judgement being thus:

Garak was a man who favoured style over substance, and therefore an idiot. 

His clothing was, whilst flattering—with one or two exceptions springing readily to mind—also deeply uncomfortable to wear. Any outfit that required more than four different layers, underwear that resembled some sort of heavily elasticated torture device, and the addition of what he could only assume was a modesty panel about the neckline—which made his already over-sensitive neck ridges itch like hell, too—was nothing short of idiocy. 

Comfort was not a word in Garak’s lexicon. 

The words 'fashion' and 'victim', however, very much were. 

Grimacing, Julian closed the last of far too many fasteners and sighed heavily. It was no wonder Garak's posture was so impeccable. Julian felt as though he could barely move, let alone slouch. But, he had to admit, he did look good. 

Wary of what embarrassment eyeing himself further in the mirror might lead to—the memory of what had happened back in the bathroom at the forefront of his mind—he shook his head and stepped out from the bedroom before his hands found something else to occupy them beyond the simple fastening of buttons. 

And walked straight into Garak. 

“Good morning, Doctor,” said Garak brightly, hands grasping the top of Julian’s arms to keep him steady. His smile was wide and entirely too cheery for 08:00 hours. “Did you sleep well?”

Now there was a loaded question. 

Was Garak aware of the torment his little display last night had induced in him? He’d hot-footed it from the bed pretty quickly, true, but maybe, in that short moment before the sticky reality of his situation had set in, he’d noticed Julian’s own arousal. He could only hope that if he had, he’d made the same assumption as Julian: that he had been sound asleep.

Julian eyed Garak suspiciously; his face was a picture of innocence, but that meant nothing. Julian had perfected the slightly gormless look Garak was currently sporting long ago—it was his own mask, of a sort, and one he was sure his face fell into by default from muscle memory alone. 

As ever, he had absolutely no idea what Garak was thinking. Or what he knew. 

“I slept well enough, thank you,” Julian said, unable to look Garak in the eye. “Yourself? You were gone when I woke up. I’d assumed you’d sleep through the best part of the morning.” He hesitated for a moment before adding, “I’ve never been much of an early riser. And that goes double after an injury.”

The gormless-looking smile faded. Garak blinked. Julian could have sworn he saw him pale slightly. 

Interesting. 

“I wasn’t aware you were keeping such a close eye on me, Doctor.”

“Difficult not to when sharing a bed.”

Garak’s hands tightened fractionally upon his arms. Julian felt a jolt of heat flash through him at the touch, but he willed it away. He could already feel his neck ridges beginning to flush; he was thankful, for perhaps the first and the only time, that Garak’s dress sense tended to fall along more conservative lines. 

“Perhaps you would prefer it if I slept on the sofa this evening?” Garak replied. 

A very small voice in the back of Julian’s mind fervently agreed with the suggestion. It would certainly solve a lot of problems. With the way things were going, Julian was no longer sure he’d be able to keep his hands to himself. Or keep his hands from himself, if it came to it. 

Unfortunately, the sole voice of reason was drowned out by a multitude of others, all of which rebelled at the idea of being denied such an intimate opportunity. 

“As kind of you as it is, sacrificing your bed like that, I’d prefer it if we continued to share,” he said, more truthfully than he had intended. 

“Miss me already, Doctor? I’m touched.”

Not yet, he wasn’t, but it was a close run thing. 

“I just like to keep you where I can see you,” Julian said, firmly ignoring the way his fingers itched. “I think you’d call it self preservation.”

Garak’s breathing quickened. A small smile curled at the very edge of his lips. Julian felt another prickle of heat crawl across his neck ridges as he spotted the pink flush that had begun to colour Garak’s cheeks. Julian recognised that reaction. Oh yes. 

Excitement. 

(Of a very particular variety.)

“I have no intention of getting my body back with a crick in the neck,” Garak said carefully.

Julian could have sworn Garak had stepped closer. He felt his heartbeat begin to pick up pace, and an answering pulse settle deep in the slit between his thighs. 

“And you think I do?”

“I can’t claim to know what you think. Your mind remains a mystery to me.”

“But not my body?” Julian countered.

“Oh, I’m sure it has more than a few secrets left.”

Garak’s hands were still wrapped around his arms. Julian could feel the heat of his fingers through his sleeves. Fancied he could feel the heat of his body, too, now little more than a few scant centimeters away. He could certainly smell it. A faint, musky sort of smell, undercut with the barest hint of soap and… something he couldn’t identify. 

"There were easier ways to discover them, you know."

"Are you accusing me of engineering this whole situation?" Garak replied. 

"No. Don't be ridiculous."

Garak’s nostrils flared as he took a deep breath, his eyes boring into Julian’s own, his irises little more than thin rings of brown around wide black pupils. The sheer closeness of him was intoxicating. A few inches more, and their lips would touch. But neither of them moved to close the gap. 

Until...

"Pity,” Garak murmured, head tilting forwards a fraction. “The initial insinuation was really rather flattering." 

Time seemed to still. Julian felt as though he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. His neck ridges were tight. His stomach in knots. 

This was it. Garak was going to kiss him. Or do whatever it was that Cardassians did instead of kissing. Biting? Licking? Nuzzling? 

Garak was about to do _something_. And whatever that something was, Julian wanted it more than anything else he could think of. 

Julian swallowed drily, leaning forward to meet Garak in the middle, heart pounding, when his loud chip of a combadge sounded. His combadge.

 _/// Sisko to Bashir ///_

No!

Garak blinked, then took a step back, his hands sliding from Julian’s arms to rest at his sides. And, just like that, the blurred line between them began to sharpen once more.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you all know, due to RL commitments, I’m afraid that updates on both this and all my other fics will likely be irregular for the foreseeable future. Nothing has been abandoned. It’s just going to be slow going for a while. So, apologies both in advance (for the chapters I have yet to post) and in hindsight (for the length of time it has taken me to post this chapter in particular).


End file.
